Corona and Critical Thinking

One thing this Pandemic has exposed is the real need to better teach critical thinking, the scientific method and basic maths and statistics in our schools and universities.

There was a great book published may years ago titled, ‘Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics’ (and others with the same title – based on a Mark Twain quote such as this one https://www.amazon.com/Lies-Damn-Statistics-Manipulation-Opinion/dp/0393331490) that highlights how easy it is to misuse and mis-interpret statistics.

Also how many actually do a course in logic or learn how inductive, deductive and abductive reasoning works. For example in Australia, Mathematical Induction is not taught until the last 2 years of high school and then only in a Specialist Mathematicss course (meaning that only a very small proportion of our youth are ever introduced to it).

And take abductive reasoning as used extensively in the historical sciences. It is not taught in maths courses or any typical undergraduate Physical Science courses at high school or university.

Here is a short introduction I wrote about abductive reasoning a couple of years ago:

https://luke443.blogspot.com/2018/01/understanding-abductive-reasoning-and.html

And sadly, too many fall for the error of believing the scientists rather than the science, that is, assuming too much and not being critical and questioning enough.

Clearly we should heed the words of experts in preference to those without the understanding and experience in any areas of endeavour, but we need to be very careful when the experts can’t agree, or when there are other reasons to question their motives and perhaps their own ‘confirmation biases’.

This is so obvious in such areas of scientific controversy such as Darwinian Evolution and Medical Research. Books like Thomas Kuhn’s ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’; the 1982 seminal work ‘Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science’ by William Broad & Nicholas Wade, as well as the recent work ‘Fake Science’ by Austin Ruse should all be required reading for high school and university students in my opinion.

And so to the challenge of the Covid-19. I don’t know the answers, but I do know that there are a lot of questions. A lot that doesn’t make sense, a lot that is in dispute and a lot of damage that is already being done to our democracy, our economy and the freedoms of the Western World that have been so hard won.

I would like to share just a few of the questions and statistical challenges.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that at least 20,000 deaths between Oct. 1 and Feb. 29 in the U.S. were tied to the flu, with children accounting for 136 cases. The organization said hospitalization rates were higher among young children during the period. At least 34 million were sickened with the flu so far, with  350,000 hospitalizations.”
– source https://www.ibtimes.com/coronavirus-vs-flu-20000-people-died-influenza-season-us-2936439  

That’s 20 thousand deaths over a 5 month period or an average of 4,000 per month. During the last 2-3 months that the Corona virus has impacted the US, there are around 340,000 confirmed cases with around 10,000 deaths (attributed to the virus). So assuming that these statistics are reasonably correct (and that is in serious question, as I will highlight), we have a tenth as many cases in the US, but approximately the same number of deaths per month.

So we could argue that this death rate makes Covid-19 10 times more deadly in relative terms. Other statistics I have seen would suggest that Covid-19 is more serious than the flu in general.

But when we compare these death rates with other causes they pale in comparison.

Some 350,000 - 640,000 Americans die every year from Heart Disease. That’s well over 50,000 per month and some 10 times the number of deaths from Covid-19 in the same time period. But also it has been reported that if you die from heart disease right now, and the US medical authorities determine you to be an asymptomatic carrier of Covid-19 in your post-Mortem, they legally add your death to the Corona virus death toll. If this is the case and it is prevalent, then we might expect to see a significant decline in the number of deaths from heart disease as the deaths from the Corona virus increase (and such a stat seems evident as I will show below).

In 2019 apparently in the USA around 250,000 died from medical errors as well.

But even more tragic is that the USA has around 1 million deaths pa from abortion, New York alone has over 10,000 per month which is roughly some 30 times more for the same time period. What if we were to show the same level of concern for these deaths of the most innocent and vulnerable of our society?

But with respect to this pandemic we need to ask, are the statistics for the Corona virus accurate?

It would appear that this is seriously questionable, because it appears that Covid-19 is being blamed for a great many deaths from other causes such as heart attacks and pneumonia.

First check out this article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doctors-hospitals-emergency-care-heart-attack-stroke.html

The Yale Professor of Medicine who wrote this article offers a number of explanations for an unexpected and strange phenomenon that rather than heart attacks and strokes (and deaths resulting from these increasing), the opposite appears to be occurring:

“We actually expected to see more heart attacks during this time. Respiratory infections typically increase the risk of heart attacks. Studies suggest that recent respiratory infections can double the risk of a heart attack or stroke.”

More than one of his explanations may well be correct and significant. But also consider these graphs and statistics taken directly from CDC data:

Firstly, this graph shows the seasonal nature of deaths from the flu and pneumonia, so the recent decrease is to be expected to some degree.

This graph though would suggest the significant drop in pneumonia cases (that is NOT the flu and not Corona) is a serious outlier and needs to be questioned.

And further, this very significant drop in all deaths, while great news in one sense, does bring into further question the corresponding increase in Corona deaths.

The inference that can be drawn, but that can’t as yet be verified, is that deaths from causes other than Covid-19 are being wrongly attributed to Covid-19 to over dramatize the impact and justify the draconian and un-democratic regulations being implemented in an escalating manner.

There are plenty of other statistic anomalies that warrant investigation, and there are not as yet any definitive answers as far as I am aware, but as I indicated at the being of this article, I suspect far too many people are uncritically accepting the heightened degree of panic that the MSM continues to peddle.

So I would argue that we need to be more critical and reflective in our analysis of the information presented regarding this pandemic. Perhaps while people are at home with a little more time on their hands, they could start some courses of study in logic, critical thinking; and statistical analysis as well as reading some good books such as those mentioned above.

Update: Thursday 9th April

There is now even more evidence that the counting is seriously exaggerated when almost any aliment is added to the head count is there is a whiff of corona involved - this was confirmed by one of the USAs top two medical spokes-persons on the pandemic, Dr Birx - read more here:
https://ussanews.com/News1/2020/04/08/dr-birx-explains-how-covid-19-deaths-are-counted-a-liberal-approach-to-mortality/

Also the good news of a fall in overall deaths (some 15% according to some accounts) is welcome as is the fall in infections and the rise in recoveries as seen in South Korea, Taiwan and Australia - see graphs below:

South Korea:

Taiwan:

Australia:

More on questioning the experts and their motivations:
 https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/04/09/trust-the-experts-on-coronavirus-sure-which-experts/